Matthew 23:15
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel around by sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of Gehenna as yourselves.”
What does Matthew 23:15 mean?
Jesus here is calling out religious leaders who are so focused on winning converts that they miss the point of faith entirely. They work tirelessly to bring people into their system, but then they pass on their own spiritual emptiness and rule-following obsession to these new followers, making them even more disconnected from God's heart. It's a sharp rebuke about how zealous activity can actually harm people spiritually when it's driven by pride rather than genuine love. The warning still speaks to us: it's easy to draw people into a community or belief system while actually leading them away from what matters most.